Rayne Today now resumes normal blogging after a brief interruption (yeah, I hear you, none of my blogging is “normal”, per se…you know what I mean).

 

I’m so psyched, so pumped, my blood is coursing with estrogen.  Had a MASSIVE dose yesterday, at what must have been the largest gathering of women I have ever been to in my lifetime.

 

 Those of you who know me well will realize what an oddity this is; I’m usually not in attendance at women’s gathering as they usually make me quite ill. 

 

(Don’t look for me at wedding or baby showers unless they’re co-ed.  In fact, I’m probably the only woman who’s ever fled her own wedding shower, ripping across the lawn of her maid-of-honor in a pickup truck immediately following the arrival of a stripper.   <Bleccchh>  The thought of a wedding/baby shower makes me queasy.

 

And you can probably imagine how I feel about certain organized religions, too…)

 

So when my closest friend said, hey, let’s go to a women’s conference sponsored by a church group, I balked a bit initially.  I got over it fairly quickly, since she and I are kindred who feel the same way about showers.  <kaaaack>

 

What could be so damned compelling that this kindred soul would even dare suggest this women’s conference to me, of all people?  The speakers and the topic matter, in the right venue (no, it wasn’t the food…).

 

So there I was, in line yesterday morning, waiting to be screened by security, outside the beautiful Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit.  In line with hundreds and hundreds of women, all ages, sizes, dress, a very few men included.  While waiting to attend “Women, Love and Power: Healing the World in the 21^st Century”, presented by Renaissance Unity Interfaith Spiritual Fellowship, I fought off nagging concerns and phobic fears (like, eeeewwww, this women’s thing could get u-g-l-y and I’ll be trapped here for 10 hours since I drove both of us quite a distance to attend).  My friend shares later she felt the same way at the time.  Explains why weren’t looking eyeball-to-eyeball a lot during our 40-minute wait in line…

 

But any concerns were completely unfounded.  It was a fabulous experience.  If you ever have the chance to listen to any of the following folks speak, RUN.  GET TICKETS NOW AND RUN TO HEAR THEM:

 

Marianne Williamson – pastor (Renaissance Unity) and author (Return to Love)

Rachel Bagby – vocal artist, poet, composer

bell hooks – author (Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism) and scholar

Riane Eisler – activist, author (The Chalice and The Blade), president of the Center for Partnership Studies

Anne Lamott – author (Traveling Mercies, Blue Shoe) and contributor to Salon

Julia Butterfly Hill – ecological activist, known for a 2 year tree-sit protest

Senator Debbie Stabenow – first female Senator from the great state of Michigan

Oprah Winfrey – TV personality, actress, founder and owner of Harpo Productions

 

And be sure to listen to The Gospel Truth choir if you can catch them in the flesh. 

 

Of these speakers I had my favorites, of course; my faves might be different from those of other attendees.  But Riane Eisler, Anne Lamott and Oprah Winfrey were by far the most energizing for me.  All three gave prescriptions for making constructive change, stuff that one could really latch on to and really make work.  All three were funny in their own way, both Eisler and Winfrey alternately serious and humorous. 

 

Anne Lamott was an absolute scream – we were laughing soooooo hard at her impression of the negative voices in her head (“KFucked Radio”, she called it), especially the one that called her a “Dick Cheney in Dreadlocks”.  Omigod, what an image, and how far from that image she really is!!!  I dang near wet myself.  Lamott recommends that women express themselves, whether writing or through some other art, but to

 

n      start where you are,

n      write (or whatever your art or craft is) a little bit every day,

n      and do it poorly (give yourself to permission to fall, it’s okay). 

 

Writing page a day eventually becomes a book – she gives a kind of “eating an elephant one spoon at a time” prescription.

 

Riane Eisler’s family managed to escape from Nazi Germany when she was a child (fortunately departing on the vessel just before the “Voyage of the Damned”, which was yet another U.S. failure).  Her mother saved her father from the police at one point.  Eisler’s perspective as a Jewish escapee with a courageous mother, highly influence her mission and message.  For this perspective and message I’m very grateful.  She models the world into two camps: domination-oriented and partnership-oriented.  Domination is predicated on the subjugation of someone, and for this reason is not positive or constructive; partnership is empowering and builds without violence.   I wish to heaven that the highest echelons of government could hear her Six Interventions for changing the world, built on the partnership model:

 

1. Eliminate intimate violence – violence against family members in the home teaches children that violence is acceptable; anti-violence messages must begin at the earliest ages;
2. Initiate education for partnership-based childcare – parents, other family and community members, actively working to care for children in healthy environments;
3. Change the current education system – why is it our scholastic texts and curriculum glorify violence by asking children to remember the dates of battles?  Curriculum should be oriented away from violence.  (ENORMOUS cheer from the audience here.)
4. Raise the status of women worldwide – success of women is a better indicator of the socio-economic progress of a country or culture than other indicators.  (Think about it – Afghanistan is a perfect example: the women were denigrated and treated as chattel, and the country itself fell into the darkest of ages.)
5. Increase the visibility and value of care giving – our current measures of GDP do not include the value of care provided to our children, our family, our elderly; yet our children are our most valuable assets, being the future of our nation.  Yet their care has no value in this society.
6. Change our beliefs – outcomes are directly affected by our beliefs.  If we believe people are second-class, we limit their ability to achieve and therefore limit the larger success of our society.  If we continue to fund weapons at exponentially greater amounts than we fund education, child and elder care, what can we expect to harvest?

Incredibly simple stuff, costing us FAR LESS than weaponry, having far-reaching positive results, and desperately needed around the globe.   (Probably too simple, too obvious and too women-empowering for the likes of our current government…)

 

And Oprah?  What does one really need to say about Oprah?  She’s a force of nature.  But it didn’t hurt for us to be reminded that she was born a “colored girl”, in 1954 in Mississippi; at that time, a “colored” girl’s best prospects were to get a good job in a nice white lady’s kitchen, with every other Sunday off, leftovers and hand-me-downs sent home occasionally.  What a grim potential future.  How quickly we forget how far black women have had to come, and how difficult the battle.  Oprah offered one of her personal experiences of racism at a TV station in Baltimore very early in her career; after hiring her for a news position, management determined her “nose was too broad, her eyes set too far apart” (in other words, they discovered she was BLACK, no button-nosed tiny-faced yellow-skinned female passing as white/Latino).  After a botched attempt by the station to change her appearance (which cost her all her hair), the station sent her off to a talk show slot to let her run out her contract.  The rest is history. 

 

Isn’t it incredible, I thought, how sometimes our greatest gifts appear as our greatest obstacles and torments? 

 

Oprah’s prescription to women was pretty personal and direct, a kindly yet blunt kick-in-the pants:

 

n      Work on changing your “shadow beliefs” (those hidden self-negating messages we’ve buried but taken to heart that limit our ability to achieve greatness);

n      Stop playing yourself small – you’re no “just a little” anything, period.

n      Be “full of yourseft” – women should stop listening to the negative connotation that “being full or yourself” is a bad thing;

n      Fear holds people back – you are far more powerful than you know;

n      Trust there is a positive force working in your life – listen carefully, the force speaks to you and has a better plan for you if you take the time to be quiet and listen;

n      Be a strong mother – strong mothers build strong children; in particular, strong black mothers help keep young black men from being a statistic.

 

Can you see this at work in Oprah’s life?  I can – I don’t think there’s a thing on here that’s something she doesn’t actively demonstrate day-to-day.  She’s walking the walk, no lip service here.  (Sure, she’s got no children of her own, but she’s a strong “mother of invention”, a strong mother of media, yes?)

 

I felt alternately sorry for and proud of the very few men who came to this conference (I wondered how many were members of the Renaissance Unity congregation).  There wasn’t any hardcore male bashing, but it was pretty clear that paternalistic-hierarchical societal norms have done little or nothing for womenkind; it was equally clear that most of the solutions are not those that our male-oriented government will welcome with open arms and cash. 

 

Speaking of government: the part of the conference that gripped me the most, wrenched my gut?  Marianne Williamson’s introduction of Senator Debbie Stabenow.  Marianne reminded us:

 

n      How very long it took for women to get the right to vote in this country,

n      Women’s right to vote was won only 82 years ago (many of our mothers were born during a time when they could not vote or born to women who could not vote at some time in their lives);

n      Women are still greatly underrepresented in national public office: of 460+ U.S. Representatives, only 60 are women, and only 13 of 100 U.S. Senators currently in office are women; yet women represent more than 50% of the population.

 

I admit it -- I broke down and cried when Marianne recounted this last figure.  It’s not that women should be elected only because they are female – I don’t think anyone should receive public office based on race, ethnicity, gender, sex or sexual orientation.  But that after all this time it’s shamefully pathetic that a group who comprises more than critical mass of the eligible voters in this country is still grossly underrepresented.

 

It’s not this way in the Nordic countries (who have a higher standard living than we do I should point out) – women hold a nearly-equitable number of public office positions.  Based on the example of Nordic countries, I’d have to extrapolate that the U.S. would not tumble into a complete quagmire if more women were in office; I also don’t see Nordic countries rattling sabers, either. 

 

This conference shook my comfy little cage.  It’s time to bust out of this velvet nest.  I need to get off my butt and put the pedal to the medal, walk the talk, do something constructive, do it now.  This blog was one step in that direction, writing a little bit about the stuff in my head in an effort to bring the stuff in my head to life.  Now it’s got the potential to do even more, if you are able to see my point and if this compels you to do anything to make positive change in the world.  

 

Outside of this blog I need to do something more: I need to call the local office of my preferred political party and see what I can do to help the process move in the direction in which I believe.  I need to have a dialogue with my local school administration, to see where I can help with changing the educational system from my perspective as a parent.  My children have had and will continue to have a strong mother, who tells them that weapons are only for defense, not offense; demonstrates to them the world is a connected place and their actions impact others directly; that karma means choice, and they get what they choose (so make good choices every day).  What more can I do?  I don’t yet know, but I’m sure that something will come to me.

 

Just ‘cuz you didn’t go to this conference doesn’t mean you weren’t addressed.  And if you’re reading this, well, all of this applies to you.

 

What will you do to change this world?  It’s a rhetorical question, but I do expect to see results.  And soon.  Please.  Thank you very much.

  2:23:02 PM    comment []

Nuts, I blogged an entry very late on 03-OCT-02 which apparently went into blog vapor.   And because I was silly enough not to CMA, I didn’t save it as a text file FIRST before posting.  Newbie bloggers, beware.  Save blog entries as a file first before posting to blog.  Senior bloggers, if you have any better tips for newbies on this issue, feel free to advise.  Anyhow, I’ll try to repost my comments (even if they were brief and possibly pointless)…

 

* * *

 

After further thought, this speech was one that Big Al Gore should have given.  Relaxed, expansive, given from a vantage of leadership knowledge, conversational.  It’s lacking the vague stridency that has been creeping into Big Al’s more recent  speeches and offers a constructive prescription.

 

If you get to read this, Big Al ole’ buddy, I love ya’ man, but you might think about taking this hint.  Look at how well this speech was received.  Try the same approach – work from a few notes only, speak from the heart, think big like the leader we know you can be.

 

Maybe Bubba has something to offer you, after all the pain he’s caused you.  It could be positive, constructive payback.

 

And maybe Bubba could line up a speech opportunity with Tony Blair, Labor, and a few other folks you used to see more regularly.  You could start overseas and work your way back home.  Wouldn't hurt to have a Hollywood friend at some of your speeches, either...worked for this guy, don't you think?  Mr. Spacey was a nice prop.  Just a couple thoughts, ole' buddy.

  11:18:38 AM    comment []